Looking for the mid-major contenders 
November, 26, 2008
11/26/08
1:05
PM ET
Looking back one calendar year, we can see that 24 of the AP Top 25 teams on Feast Week 2007 were destined to be thankful all season long. With the exception of North Carolina State, which never did shake off that L-Tryptophan, each squad listed qualified for the NCAA Tournament. It's an eerily prescient list too, with the 2008 Final Four quartet all lodged in the top positions.
A more difficult forecasting task is trying to figure out which schools among the tangled mass of mid-majors will enter the field to challenge the top seeds four months from now. Few saw eventual Round of 32 participant Siena coming, for example, and fewer could have predicted that San Diego and Western Kentucky would be battling for a spot in the Sweet 16.
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Kyle Whelliston
Senior Writer, ESPN.comKyle Whelliston has contributed to ESPN.com's college basketball coverage since 2005. He covers mid-major programs for Basketball Times magazine, and will have a basketball travelogue of the 2008-09 season published next summer. Whelliston also founded midmajority.com and statistical database site Basketball State (bbstate.com).
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Fran Fraschilla is an analyst for ESPN and was previously the head coach at New Mexico, St. John's and Manhattan.
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